EMILY ESFAHANI SMITH, THE ATLANTIC
“Kindness doesn’t mean that we don’t express our
anger,” Julie Gottman explained, “but the kindness informs how we choose to
express the anger. You can throw spears at your partner. Or you can explain why
you’re hurt and angry, and that’s the kinder path.”
John
Gottman elaborated on those spears: “Disasters will say things differently in a
fight. Disasters will say ‘You’re late. What’s wrong with you? You’re just like
your mom.’ Masters will say ‘I feel bad for picking on you about your lateness,
and I know it’s not your fault, but it’s really annoying that you’re late
again.’”
For the
hundreds of thousands of couples getting married each June — and for the
millions of couples currently together, married or not — the lesson from the
research is clear: If you want to have a stable, healthy relationship, exercise
kindness early and often.
When
people think about practicing kindness, they often think about small acts of
generosity, like buying each other little gifts or giving one another back rubs
every now and then. While those are great examples of generosity, kindness can
also be built into the very backbone of a relationship through the way partners
interact with each other on a day-to-day basis, whether or not there are back
rubs and chocolates involved.
One way
to practice kindness is by being generous about your partner’s intentions. From
the research of the Gottmans, we know that disasters see negativity in their
relationship even when it is not there. An angry wife may assume, for example,
that when her husband left the toilet seat up, he was deliberately trying to
annoy her. But he may have just absent-mindedly forgotten to put the seat down.
Or say a
wife is running late to dinner (again), and the husband assumes that she
doesn’t value him enough to show up to their date on time after he took the
trouble to make a reservation and leave work early so that they could spend a
romantic evening together. But it turns out that the wife was running late
because she stopped by a store to pick him up a gift for their special night
out.
Imagine
her joining him for dinner, excited to deliver her gift, only to realize that he’s
in a sour mood because he misinterpreted what was motivating her behavior. The
ability to interpret your partner’s actions and intentions charitably can
soften the sharp edge of conflict.
“Even in
relationships where people are frustrated, it’s almost always the case that
there are positive things going on and people trying to do the right thing,”
psychologist Ty Tashiro told me. “A lot of times, a partner is trying to
do the right thing even if it’s executed poorly. So appreciate the intent.”
Another powerful
kindness strategy revolves around shared joy. One of the telltale signs of the
disaster couples Gottman studied was their inability to connect over each
other’s good news. When one person in the relationship shared the good news of,
say, a promotion at work with excitement, the other would respond with wooden
disinterest by checking his watch or shutting the conversation down with a
comment like, “That’s nice.”
We’ve all
heard that partners should be there for each other when the going gets rough. But research shows that
being there for each other when things go right is actually
more important for relationship quality. How someone responds to a partner’s good
news can have dramatic consequences for the relationship.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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